In honor of National Women’s Health Week, this post highlights some free online resources for Women’s Health that may be of interest to researchers, clinicians and patients alike.
AHRQ Resources for Women’s Health
“AHRQ offers information to help enhance our understanding of women’s unique health needs and empower women to be more engaged in health care decisions.” See their Resources for Women’s Health for “research updates and information to help women manage diseases and conditions”.
MEDLINEPlus Women’s Health
MedlinePlus is the NIH’s database resource intended for “patients and their families and friends”. They have a Health Topic dedicated to Women’s Health since “some of the health issues that affect both men and women can affect women differently.”
ACS Women’s Health
The American Cancer Society website has a Women’s Health section where visitors can learn about many of the cancers that commonly affect women and what women can do to help protect themselves and catch cancer early.
Women’s Preventive Services
“The Women’s Preventive Services Initiative (WPSI) is a collaborative effort between health professional societies and consumer organizations that are experts in women’s health.” Among other things, the WPSI reviews and recommends updates to the Women’s Preventive Services Guidelines which identify preventive services and screenings for women.
NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health
The NIH’s Office of Research in Women’s Health works to ensure that sex and gender are taken into account when conducting health research and that women are included in clinical research trials.
FDA Office of Women’s Health
FDA’s Office of Women’s Health (OWH) “promotes and conducts research initiatives that facilitate FDA regulatory decision-making and advance the understanding of sex differences and health conditions unique to women”.
Women’s Health MeSH
When searching the MEDLINE (via PubMed) database for scholarly literature, the Women’s Health Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) may be used to retrieve papers on this topic. Search result sets can also be limited by “Sex” thanks to the MeSH check tag Female.
Healthy People 2020 Structured Evidence Queries
Some Women’s Health topics like Family Planning and Maternal, Infant, and Child are also available as pre-formulated PubMed search strategies via the Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce (PHPartners) website. These search strategies have been formulated to retrieve scholarly articles related to the Healthy People 2020 objectives.
If you have questions about any of these resources, feel free to contact us!
Happy National Women’s Health Week!